As a couple who has been impacted by infertility, I struggled with our story for a while; probably more so than Andrew struggled. As a woman, not being able to conceive children left me feeling like a failure in so many ways. There was a point in our journey when I felt lost; I felt defective; I felt broken; I felt inadequate; I felt “less than” capable and worthy as other women; I felt like I was letting my husband and my family down; I felt as though I was maybe being “punished” for all the “wrongs” I did in my life. Despite those and many other feelings, I, and we, remained faithful. As a couple of faith who trust in the bigger plan that we cannot always see and do not always understand, we stayed committed to putting our trust in God’s plan for our lives and for our family. Together and alone, Andrew and I spent countless hours in prayer asking God to help us conceive a child. Until the day God placed a question on my heart during prayer that changed the course of our lives forever; “Do you want to be pregnant, or do you want to be parents?” The answer was simple; we wanted to be parents.
In that moment of prayer, God provided us with clarity. He transformed our hearts and our minds to help us see that our family and our role as parents may not be defined by our ability to conceive, but rather by our ability to simply love and serve others. In that moment, God reminded us that we’ve all been called to love and serve His people, rather than to be served by them, and we’re meant to love and serve in whatever unique ways HE sees fit. It was then when our prayers changed from; “please help us to conceive a child” to “please help us to love and serve as parents as you see fit.”
Today, after an ongoing seven-year journey through infertility, foster care, and adoption, we are the blessed parents of four adopted children; Micah (6), who was placed in our home through foster care in 2017 and we adopted in 2018, and a sibling group of three girls; Kinzie (5), Luna (4), and Serenity (4), who were placed in our home through foster care in 2019 and we adopted in 2021.
Infertility didn’t prevent us from becoming parents; it just changed HOW we became them and WHO we became them to. Our inability to give birth to our children doesn’t define us as their parents, nor does it define us as a family. We might not be a family by blood, but we are a family through LOVE. Ultimately, our inability to conceive was a BLESSING for us, as it gave us the ability to embrace our story and to leverage it in ways that allow us to grow together, to lead by example, to make a positive difference in our lives and in the lives of others, and to love and serve God’s people as a FAMILY, while trusting and leaning fully on the Lord throughout the journey.
Will I always wonder what it feels like as a woman to carry and give birth to a child, and are there aspects about fatherhood that Andrew may always be curious about? Naturally; but “missing out” on those experiences no longer bothers us like it used to because God helped us realize that the few experiences that we won’t have has opened the door to the many experiences and countless blessings that we will have.
One of those experiences and blessings is sharing our story. As a couple, we continue to openly share our family’s story and our journey with infertility, foster care, and adoption. We don’t do it because we’re looking for validation, praise, or recognition, nor do we do it because we feel that our family is any better or any more deserving of God’s love and grace than the next family. We do it to simply fulfill what we believe to be God’s will for our lives and to inspire others to stay rooted in their faith, to trust God’s bigger plan, and to lean fully on the Lord in all circumstances, even when all hope seems lost. We do it to provide hope to those like us who have been impacted by infertility, yet long to be the parents and the family they were meant to be, and to remind them that their inability to give birth to children doesn’t define them as parents or as a family. Rather, they’re defined by the love they share and by their ability and willingness to answer God’s call to serve one another. And, finally, we do it to be a voice for all the children and families in the world who we’re all called to love and serve through foster care and/or through adoption.
Our journey has been, and continues to be, both incredibly rewarding and incredibly challenging for a variety of reasons. Although challenging, we wouldn’t change a thing about it because we know God’s faithful plan is always better than our own, and we remind ourselves daily that He doesn’t call the prepared, He prepares the called. So, we continue to trust the plan that we cannot always see and do not always understand, and we continue to ask God to guide us where HE wants us to go, to provide us with what we need along the way, and to protect us on the journey. We continue to embrace OUR story and OUR journey because without it we wouldn’t have the opportunity to love and serve the children and the families that we do, and we wouldn’t have become the FAMILY we have grown to be.
Our FAMILY may be more of a SHRUB than a TREE, but this is the FAMILY we have grown to be; a FAMILY groomed, pruned, and shaped by God’s love and grace and defined by the LOVE we share and the ways in which we're called to SERVE.